Remember everyone else is trying to beat the light.
I once witnessed a motorcycle guy broadside a fire truck. I was called in to testify twice. I was sitting behind somone else and the light was green, but that guy heard the fire trucks coming and stopped. I did not hear them until they were so close I could not have stopped. They are supposed to have some device to change the light for them. And the driver of the first fire truck (two huge ladder trucks, one right behind the other) thought they had a green light. I saw the motorcycle guy coming toward me on the other side of a two story brick building. He never would have heard them. I looked up at the light and it turned yellow. I looked at the motorcycle and he gunned it trying to make it through the light. His helmet hit right behind the gas cap. I watched as his cycle spun out of control on its side and went to the opposite corner of the intersection. He was knocked off the cycle and ended up sitting in the middle of the street where luckily no one ran over him. He broke one leg.
After that happened I could not remember if lights turned red, green or yellow and in what order. I could just remember that the guy gunned it when he saw the yellow. The fire they were going to was in a storage unit and the whole thing burned to the ground in Chico, Caifornia in the 1970's. It was set by some disgruntled husband after his wife moved out and put all her stuff in this storage unit.